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Adverts in 35mm prints?


Ed Davor

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Hi!

 

In my movie going "career" I haven't had a chance to see them, or maybe I don't remember them... but was advertising in cinema ever as big as it was on TV, or was it always a byproduct of TV advertising? I assume that back in the days when TV adverts were distributed to TV studios in form of 16mm and 35mm film reels, showing ads in cinema would have been as simple as cutting in trailers. But what about more modern times, when ads were edited, graded and mastered on video tapes? I'm thinking 90's and 2000's. A couple of hypothetical scenarios come to mind: parallel grading, editing and optical work for making 35mm prints, or DI work and film-out (in the 2000s I guess). But did such things ever happen, or did cinema adverts die out at that point?

 

Thanks

Edited by Ed Davor
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Advertisements have appeared before trailers for decades -- some in the 90's were little more than standard def video recorded out to film, a couple were blow-ups from 16mm/Super-16, a few rare ones were clearly shot in 35mm and completed in film resolution. Certainly in the 1990's you saw public service announcements and promo spots for the local newspaper or NPR station (here in Los Angeles, we saw a lot of promos for the Los Angeles Times back then, and in the art house theaters, promos for KCRW) that seemed to have been made for the theaters.

 

Once it became standard for advertisers to create spots for HD broadcast, it became easier for them to make a version for cinema theaters.

 

Nowadays many theaters have this "pre-show" entertainment that includes advertisements.

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I remember seeing an awesome Mazda commercial in the early 2000's before a movie. It featured a fleet of sports cars racing across the desert, shot from helicopters. I believe it was on a film print, it looked sharper, less grainy, and of much higher production value than actual the feature. Since they switched ads to play on lower res digital projectors, I haven't seen one that looked as good. Hopefully that will change at some point, we need more reasons to actually go to the theater.

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Thanks both of you for your answers.

 

What I'd like to hear is more examples like Satsuki mentioned, where an advert was printed to 35mm (and obviously not recorded to film from SD source). Any other memories and experiences?

 

I remember reading some articles where it is mentioned that an ad has been scanned from film, post-produced in digital (special effects, titles etc.), and recorded out back to film, then telecined for TV. A cinema presentation wasn't mentioned, but can one assume that since they went through the effort of recording it back to film that it was done for cinema releases?

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35mm. prints certainly were spliced in. I vividly remember the Ridley Scott cigarette ad for Benson & Hedges, shown with an X (18) rated programme decades after TV tobacco advertising ended. This would be the very late 70s-early 80s. The best TV ads were 35mm, video ads looked scruffy and cheap beside them.

No CGI then of course. Pure craft skills.

You can still find plenty for sale on eBay. Not so many 35mm. Steenbecks to view them on, of course, because they're still in use.

Edited by Mark Dunn
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A bit off topic, but I'm planning on producing and shooting a few spec commercials on 35mm this year. The idea is to shoot everything in camera, even titles so that I can hopefully make a few 35mm prints without having to do a DI. I feel that commercials are a good venue to try something epic in scope and budget, but no one seems to be making them specifically for the cinema. I'm glad to see that others are thinking along the same lines.

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And what about that Night of the Ad Eaters show where they screen countless ads on the big screen? I've never been to one, so I don't know how were they projected in the past. Any experiences?

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